FINAL ASSIGNMENT

Your final assignment for the course is a 6-8 page, research-based paper or project discussing any of the following post-dictatorship issues: 1. The search for truth, justice, reconciliation or any other ways the civilian governments have dealt or tried to deal with the crimes/trauma of the dictatorships. 2. Reconstituting civil society: How have post-dictatorial societies attempted to reconstruct or build anew the structures of society? This can be approached from a legal, political, social or economic perspective. 3. Memory: An examination of the issue of memory, collective memory, history and memory, memorialization, etc. in the countries we have studied. If you would like to work on an issue in post-dictatorship Southern Cone that doesn’t appear here, or if you just want to discuss your topic, please get in touch with me. Essentially, your paper or project should grapple with the complexity of a return to civilian rule given the brutality of the regimes.PROJECTS: If you decide to do a project as opposed to a paper, you need to address the same topics but the range of possibilities will be much narrower than with the midterm project. The project can be presented in a different media format (video, audio, website), but it will need to be “non-fiction” and based on historical evidence. In other words, it could be a documentary video, a well-researched podcast, a serious website. In all of these forms, you must use historical evidence and present your own argument/analysis. This time around it CANNOT be a work of creative fiction, art, a photograph, etc. You can be creative in the presentation, but the project must be a serious work of history.THE IMPORTANCE OF THE QUESTION: Your paper/project needs to focus on a question that you want to answer, not just a topic that you want to describe, and in that regard you will have to think both about how you are going answer it (your methodology) and the evidence that you will use to answer it. The question needs to be well focused, since you only have a limited amount of time and resources, and your paper will be evaluated on the basis both of the question you raise and the way you answer it. STATE YOUR QUESTION: You should state both your research question and your general methodology at the very start of your paper/project. For example: In this paper, I want to answer the question of how post-conflict societies deal with the fact that two different versions of history persist among the population. To answer this question, I will look at the development of “museums of memory” in Chile. First I will look at the legislation that created these museums, and then, by looking at one specific museum, the Museum of Historical Memory, I will examine its stated purpose, the nature of its exhibits, the way that it has reached out to school programs, and critiques that I have found in Chilean newspapers. Ultimately, I will conclude that, while the project is extremely important as an attempt to validate the suffering of the victims of the dictatorship, it hasn’t served to create a single hegemonic historical narrative in the country. BACKGROUND RESEARCH: This assignment should be based on course readings supplemented with additional research. I have no precise number of sources you should include, but any reasonable research paper will include more than 2-3 books and/or 2-4 articles. You may choose to use primary sources for this paper, although that is not a requirement. Please see me if you need to discuss sources, but do this after you have already begun to look for sources and have discussed your project with the reference librarians.REFERENCES: All source material used should be cited in footnotes or endnotes; a bibliography is not necessary, but you may include one if you choose. All citations should be formatted following the examples given in “How to Cite Sources in this Course” located at: http://www.oberlin.edu/faculty/svolk/citation.htm. I expect that by this point you will follow these guidelines carefully. Do NOT use parenthetical citations (Feitlowitz, 219), only use footnotes.[1] Please note that in history, you can never have more than one number at the end of the sentence. So: not this[2],[3] but yes this.[4] Unless you are citing an entire work, you need to provide a page/s number (or chapter, etc.) for each reference. The Oppenheim book (Politics in Chile) should be a good model to use except that you will be using FOOTNOTES rather than ENDNOTES. Please contact me if you have a question on the proper forms to use. You might be accustomed to a different citation format in different disciplines. Here you need to observe the standard form for History references.DUE DATE: Papers are due on Thursday, December 20 at 11:00am. There will be NO extensions allowed on this paper unless you request an official incomplete in the course (which I need to sign). I will give you an incomplete if you request one, but if you don’t request an incomplete and do not turn your paper in on time, you will not get credit for it. No exceptions.HONOR CODE: Don’t forget to sign an honor code.FINAL THOUGHT: As you are thinking of a question to answer, think back to the opening week of classes when we discussed why study history in the first place.SUBMITTING YOUR PAPER: Please turn in your paper in hard copy to my office (Rice 309). If you will be off campus, you can turn it in by email attachment. FEEDBACK: My comments on this paper will be minimal, given that many students don’t pick them up. If you want more feedback, please request that on your papers. [1] Footnotes [2] Source #1[3] Source #2[4] Source 2; source 3